Basic Forms

by Skolnik, Fred;

  “Whoop-de-do,” said Elizabeth.

  “You know,” Horn said, “we’ve had our ups and downs. We’ve played Europe and we’ve played the Far East. We’ve played before royalty and we’ve played in the sticks. But there’s no place like home. When we got back to New York after our London run we had the opportunity to appear with the late great Warren Sloat at the old Empire. Anyway, in this play we were doing, Warren plays a Roman general by the name of Ephemerus Claviolus. I’m Flaccidus Condominius, a Roman senator, Liz is Porcia Bonaventura. This is just after the troops got back from Carthage where they destroyed the city. Porcia had been Warren’s lover but had taken up with me in his absence. Now he’s out to get me. There’s some pretty gruesome stuff at the end of the first act. At any rate he gets me convicted on some trumped-up charge and I have to go into exile. Porcia stays behind to clear my name. What follows is very cleverly done. We conduct a secret correspondence. She stands on one side of the stage and I stand at the other and we read our letters to each other while the play proceeds in settings like the Forum and the Senate. What you get are parallel plots unfolding simultaneously. It’s a little hard to follow but once you get the hang of it and separate the voices you understand that it’s all of a piece. The critics loved it. This goes on for the entire second act. Claviolus tries to win Porcia back but to no avail. She

  remains loyal to Flaccidus. But in the meantime Flaccidus has fallen in love with another woman. This is Livinia, the wife of Furius Grandosus, the governor of the province where Flaccidus is in exile. She had been the mistress of Marcus Catonicus, another general and a rival of Claviolus. You can imagine what follows.”

  “Don’t spoil it for him,” Elizabeth said.

  “Well, it’s no big secret. Catonicus and Flaccidus make their peace and secretly return to Rome with the idea of assassinating Claviolus. You see, Catonicus had always been a secret admirer of Porcia’s and now he sees a chance to win her once Claviolus is out of the way and Flaccidus hooks up with Livinia. The third act is set almost entirely in the Hysterectum with a side trip to the Atrium Vestae where the virgins have a little romp with some Greek slaves. Catonicus and Flaccidus sneak up on Claviolus while he’s snoozing and cut his balls off. That pretty much puts him out of the picture. Then they claim their women and as the curtain falls there’s some kind of ceremony at the rear end of the Hysterectum and we’re given to understand that one of these two men, Flaccidus or Catonicus, will be the progenitor of a future emperor of Rome.”

  “Gee,” Elizabeth said.

  Horn stood up abruptly. “You’ll have to excuse me for a moment,” he said. “Duty calls.” He rushed off to the kitchen and then emerged with another tray, his face gleaming with little beads of sweat and the hand towel flying as he raced past them. Zupan looked toward the kitchen, which seemed to be identical to his own and located in the same relation to the living room, so that perhaps it would have been directly above his after all, despite the impression he had gotten when waiting in the hall. He wondered where the guests were, as it was nearly nine o’clock.

  Horn handed him another drink, greenish and astringent. Elizabeth got a green one too. It made his head swim and everything a blur. Elizabeth’s face was very close to his. He smelled her strong perfume and her red mouth was like a little cherry.

  Then the phone rang. Horn answered it. “Yes, I know,” he said. “No, not at all. Of course. I understand. Good. I was wondering about that myself. You and me both. If it isn’t one thing it’s the other. Every day. No, I haven’t. I saw it too. Don’t ask. I suppose so. It takes one to know one. She’s fine. Sure, I’ll put her on. Liz?”

  “Hi,” Elizabeth said. “Don’t I know it. Aren’t we all. You can say that again. Who isn’t. That’s what they all say. Mum’s the word. When it rains it pours. I know what you mean. They’re all the same. Those are my sentiments exactly. I’m not so sure about that. I’ve been there myself. It takes one to know one. Bye now.”

  She handed Horn the phone and jumped to her feet. “Well,” she said, “I guess I’m on,” kicking off her shoes and lifting her gown above the tops of her stockings to reveal the pale white flesh of her thighs as she did a little two-step in the center of the room.

  Horn stopped again and shook his head in wonder. “Go on,” he said to Zupan, “give her a whirl. She’s dying for it.”

  “Come on, Edward, be a sport,” she said to him, holding out her hand.

  “Oh, darn it,” said Horn, “the punch is boiling over,” and flew out of the room again.

  Now Elizabeth stamped her feet and snapped her fingers, flamenco-like, her eyes shut and her lip between her teeth, beckoning to him with emphatic movements of her hips. Zupan shifted his weight from foot to foot. “Oh, you’re too much for me,” she said, falling breathlessly into his arms. “Let’s do a slow one now.”

  Immediately another record came on as Horn went flitting by with his towel flapping. Zupan could see him out of the corner of his eye as he careened around the room. Now he was here, now he was there, now he was gone and back again, removing dishes, bringing new ones, wiping ashtrays, straightening doilies as she led him back and forth across the room, her hand placed lightly on his shoulder and her hair against his cheek, humming some private melody in his ear as they swayed in one another’s arms and Horn came by with more drinks on a tray, moving behind him and going in and out of the room in his manic way.

  She led him through the door as the music went on playing. It must have been the bedroom. The room was dimly lit and the bed was covered with a white quilt. The curtains were drawn and her perfume filled the air. They continued to dance and she continued to hum in his ear. Then she fell back on the bed with a great sigh as though exhausted and as if by magic her black gown fell open and she lay on the bed seductively with her arms above her head and her back slightly arched and her small breasts flat against her chest and the brown nipples hard and her legs apart. Zupan gazed at her with only the vaguest sense of Horn moving behind him as she pulled him down and took his mouth in hers and so deep was he buried in her and so exquisite was the moment that he barely felt the probing fingers and the hard thrust and the hot quick breath on the back of his neck.

  X

  He met her often, at the Library, in the Automat. She was always waiting for him, with her leather bag held tightly in her hand and her too bright lipstick and her gleaming eye, stepping forward to meet him with a single, almost ungainly stride. She moved unsteadily on her heels, holding his elbow or leaning against him for support, yet always seeming to lead the way. She led him boldly through the crowded streets with her face exposed to the biting wind and people’s glances and seemed to smile, nodding cheerfully at the people who passed them by.

  Sometimes he waited for his phone to ring and pulled the curtain back and looked across the yard to see if she was there or listened for the footsteps in the street. The room was dark and airless, closing him in behind the three locks on the door as he paced back and forth in measured steps. Outside the window there was a tree and beneath the tree there was a stone over which he might stumble one day and high overhead a cloudless summer sky so blue it hurt the eyes to look at it.

  They ran down the subway steps when it started to rain and she laughed and shook the water from her hair. And she took off her shoes and sunk her toes into the carpet in her stockinged feet, seeming to grip the fibers like an animal moving surefooted across the forest floor, and changed into a woolen skirt and sweater and brought him a cup of

  cocoa to drink. And one day it began to snow and she wore a woolen hat and they built a snowman and she almost slipped and fell on the icy ground. They ate in the Automat and she wrapped her scarf across her mouth and pulled the hat over her brow in the biting cold and her face was raw and red. And they lay before a fire and her robe was thrown across the bed.

  And it deranged his senses to watch her soft, full breasts rise and fall beneath the woolen sweater a
nd her smooth, white knee and the calf of her leg and the arched foot and the wild hair. He wanted to mount her but did not move. She watched, him, knowing he wanted her, encouraging him in her special way, raising the skirt above her knees.

  Days, weeks, months went by. He noted what she wore, whether or not her legs were bare, the robe that was thrown across the bed. He studied the paintings on the walls, which seemed more profound, more intense, now that he had come to know her, and thought now that he could see human features too, as though they had been painted over in the heat of the moment. And sometimes he watched her paint. Here was her palette full of colors which she applied without thinking to the canvas. And afterwards she shaped them in her unique style. Each stroke of her brush determined what would follow. Each color predetermined the sequence of colors forming the shapes. Each color contained something of herself. Each color stirred something in her. The palette was her tool. She had arrived at its colors after traveling many roads. They were like the signs of a language that told the story of her life.

  But she had one painting she would not let him see. It was covered with a cloth or locked in another room. She had been working on it for a long time, she said. It was dark and gray, she said. One day it would be complete. It would achieve its final form and she would put it in a gilded frame.

  He watched her paint and observed the red enamel coffee pot and the two coffee cups. He loved her wild hair. Outside it blew in the wind. It blew across her face. She held his arm. He watched other couples in the street. He heard the brisk, determined report of women’s heels against the pavement. They were all around him. He could not see their faces but their legs were finely shaped and they wore their skirts above their knees. And the sound of traffic and the movement of the crowd and the hum of voices. It was winter. There was snow or ice on the ground. She wore a woolen hat and a checkered scarf. She held his arm. They ate in the Automat and saw a show, stopping to watch a film crew working in a roped-off area on Times Square. She held his hand in the dark theater. Her soft, full breasts rose and fell beneath her woolen sweater. She crossed her shapely legs and her skirt crept up above her knee.

  He wondered how she spent her time when she was not with him. Did she go out, or was she always painting? And she had said she had to go away from time to time. It did not occur to him to wonder where she went. It could have been anywhere. She had mentioned the south but that was perhaps just a manner of speaking in a certain mood. In the summer she wore short dresses that accentuated her fine figure and let her wild, luxurious hair fall across her face. People stared at her. In the Automat she sometimes ate the food he brought to their table listlessly, staring into space. He wondered what she was thinking. Sometimes she excused herself and descended the stairs to the restrooms.

  It was three steps from the door to the center of the room and another three steps to the bedroom. The bed was unmade, the sink was full of dishes, spiders crept along the walls. And the floorboards creaked when he paced the floor. From behind his window, through the curtain, he could watch the building across the yard, seeing the lights go on and off behind the half-raised window shades. There were elm trees in the yard and sparrows in the leaves. From a great distance he heard the sound of traffic moving in the night. The steady hum of the traffic and a certain vision of the night inspired by the sound caused his mind to race and carry him to distant places in himself. And she was there, walking as though in her own dream, delicately made, almost thin. In that time and that place he had been alone. Then they were together and then she was gone. He had been a student of philosophy. They often met, at the Library, in the Automat, and once they’d gone to see a show. It was a matinée. And that had been a perfect day and they had talked for a long while in the waning of the day when everything was steeped in shadow and then dusk had fallen and suffused the hot, still air and evening came and then the night.

  These moments turned within themselves, leaving still centers of hidden light: the sound of a woman’s heels against the pavement, the distant drone of a plane high up in the cloudless sky, dusk of a summer day. She raised her skirt above her knees and said, “Olé!” She put some music on and lit a lamp as the room grew dark and the rain beat against the windowpane.

  They sat together in the dim-lit room and she told him the story of her life. She spoke for many hours and he could see that she was sad. Her face was hidden by her hair. She wore a woolen sweater and her breasts were soft and full and her knees were smooth and white. He wanted to touch her but could not.

  “After my father died I was sent away,” she said. “Then my mother remarried. I lived in many places before I came here. I have wandered the face of the earth, you might say, but then I came back to myself. We live best inside ourselves. It is there that we are free. I sleep in the nude. I like to be unencumbered.

  “It is pleasant here, is it not? And we are alone. There is no one but us.”

  He could see his window from her balcony. It was dark, all the windows were dark, and the trees were barely visible, for it was midnight. Only the sound of a violin could be heard, drifting through the air. She made tall drinks with ice that tinkled in the glass. She lay back on the lounge with her skirt above her knees in stockinged feet with her shoes kicked off. Then she changed and wore a robe. He wanted to touch her but did not move.

  He slept curled into a ball with his head beneath the blanket and the door closed. In his head he heard the shots ring out, over and over again. It made him think of the herds of the wilderness and the heron at the water’s edge. Leaves would rustle as the shots rang out and one by one the beasts would fall.

  He thought of himself in flight, crashing through the underbrush, and the python hanging from a tree and the panther springing from a branch. And firing at everything in sight. And being free.

  Perhaps they might live together in that wilderness. They would be alone, living off the land, or in magical circumstances with all the artifacts of civilization at their behest. Or perhaps he would live without her, by himself, hunting in the forest, hearing the shots ring out.

  These were fantasies. They occupied a good deal of his time. He slept from dawn till noon and also dreamed. The dreams were never clear. He could not recapture them. He could not reenter them. That was an uncharted sea. He preferred to invent his dreams, or wait for them in a waking state. Between his dreams and his fantasies he ate his meals standing up and waited at his window behind the curtain. At night he read. A woman had come out on her balcony and looked toward his window in the pale moonlight. Her gown fell open to her thigh when she raised her foot to the parapet and stretched her arms in luxuriant ease. Their eyes had met and he had known that she was there for him alone.

  He met her often at the Library. She was always the first to arrive, waiting for him to approach her on the steps before stepping forward to let him take her arm. Her wild hair was blown across her face. Her breasts were soft and full. She wore white sweaters made of wool and woolen skirts and sometimes wore a band around her hair. People stared at them.

  She told him that she wanted him to meet people like herself, you might call them friends, and so she threw a party. He helped her make the food and set out the drinks. Not too many people came but Zupan was not at ease. Whatever they had in common excluded him. Their concerns were not his, his concerns were not theirs. She wore her gown, which fell open to her thigh as she went from room to room, drawing his eye to the smooth white flesh. People introduced themselves to him and he shook their hands and made little bows and later nodded his head in recognition as he too moved through the rooms with trays of food or drinks. She played music on the phonograph, the music of the violin that they had heard together, and then bells began to ring and there was a diminished chord like a gasp or cry and then the violins again. People turned their heads to listen to the music. He could hear that music now. It became feverish as the horns joined in like a woman’s breath coming hard and fast and then more gasps and sighs a
nd dreamy notes and the pounding rhythm of a drum. “What is that music?” people said, but she only smiled.

  And he circulated through the rooms and took some wine to drink and felt it going to his head and she came by and squeezed his arm and people watched them or chatted quietly among themselves, laughing politely behind their hands or bringing napkins to their mouths as cubes of ice tinkled in their glasses and knives and forks scraped and clattered in their plates. She sat beside him for a while and shared some food with him and he had more wine and then the music got softer until only the violins remained and it was the sweetest sound he had ever heard, soft and sweet and sad like a motherless child. The music went on and on and he could hear it now.

  Then the guests went home and it was very late and she said, “Please stay, please stay,” but he too went away and walked around the block and climbed the stairs and crept naked into his bed and slept till noon curled up like a ball.

  Days, weeks, months went by. In that time and that place he had been alone. Then he had been with her for a while. He had watched her dress. He had gone to the hardware store and bought some rope and tape. He had heard the river roar. But time was running out. Not much time was left to him. He had his lists of things to do and divided up the hours and the days. So much time for this, so much time for that. No one could read his thoughts. They were hidden in his head, though reflected in his lists and perhaps sensed in his face, which was generally bland or nondescript, except the eyes, which were cold and gray. He did not trouble about his appearance. He barely recognized himself in the mirror. He looked at his hands, then at his feet. They were alien. He felt no affection for his body. It was like wrapping paper or the frame of a picture. He might just as well have had wooden legs, though the sensation was often pleasant when he touched himself. He knew himself more by the old suede jacket he always wore. She asked him if he’d like a new one. She occasionally bought him gifts. Sometimes she bought him a book, saying, “I read this long ago, and it was good. I’m sure you’ll like it too.” Once he brought some paintings of hers to a gallery. The owner asked him how she was, said they were old friends, hinted that they had been more than friends. Zupan would have liked to hear more about her life but the gallery owner spoke about her as if there was nothing extraordinary in her past, as though she’d lived as other people lived and was no different from them. “I understand she has a little place downtown,” he said. “She never liked being in the public eye.” Then he held each painting at arm’s length. “Her style is changing,” he said. “It’s darker now, almost nightmarish, wouldn’t you say?”